I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.
June 22, 2023 2:09 AM Subscribe
Because it turns out transition isn’t the answer for everyone — to suggest otherwise is narrow-minded and proscriptive. I am nine years old. I am learning the rules, and I am learning that boys liking girl things is a very high stakes issue. I am learning that adults react the same way to my interest in makeup as they do to my interest in matches and lighters.
As if maybe, by being what I am, I might burn down something very important to them. Something that makes their life more comfortable and easy.
I am fourteen years old.
When I help my dad build things, he calls me strong. I feel like I am winning something and losing something at the same time.
I am seventeen years old.
Girls start to think I am a cute boy. I start to think I am an ugly girl.
[…]
I am in college.
I learn that some people ask to be called by different pronouns. I see how this feels in my head. It doesn’t make much of a difference. I still want to sit in that chair and flip that switch. Pronouns are the least of my concerns.
I visit a women’s college. I am surrounded by new women and we feel instantly comfortable around each other. I attend a lecture. The speaker yells “who gets to be a woman?” and a crowd of cis women responds “anyone who wants to be!” The sentiment is nice, but I think about the years I spent staring out the window at the stars and I feel suddenly uncomfortable.
Later during this trip I am having a conversation with my new friends about femininity. They are articulate and intelligent women. I’m grateful to be around them. Until I am told by one of them, angrily, that I am not really allowed to talk about femininity because I am a straight cis boy. It is not my place and it is not my territory. I should shut up and listen. Are these my people?
I don’t correct her. I never correct anyone.
I am told there is something special — something ineffable — about Female Friendship. I am told that I could not understand or experience this. They said anyone is a woman who wants to be—is it true? What does this say about my friendships with girls?
I start to consider what I might be, if my girlness hasn’t counted simply because it wasn’t overtly confessed. I think about my boyness—about my childhood and adolescence—how my experiences with boys deviated from what I was taught to expect. I change my major and spend a year writing about non-gay-identifying male femininity from the Aesthetics of the late 1880’s to vaudeville radio stars. Eventually, as a love/hate letter to coming-of-age films of the 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s, I write my thesis on the friendship and sexuality of American males and its representation in television & film. One piece of feedback is “I am so sick of boys writing about boys.”
I think about being told I was not allowed to speak about femininity. I wonder what a person like me is allowed to speak about.
[…]
One of the students tells me that I can’t be objective about masculinity because I am a straight cis male, and that I should shut up and listen. Are these my people?
I don’t correct them. I never correct anyone.
It is interesting to see where people insist proximity to a subject makes one informed, and where they insist it makes them biased. It is interesting that they think it’s their call to make.
Because I have been reduced to my appearance — to the way I present for my own well-being — by cisfeminists so often that I feel a fucked up Stockholm syndrome attachment to being misgendered, and to this dual identity. My dysmorphia is as entwined in my identity as anything else. I have lived with it for decades as a girl pretending to be a boy. And the nearer I get to something I’ve wanted my whole life, the more it feels like playing into the aesthetic politics of a group of people who reject me because of the associations they have with my body—a body which I cannot, ultimately, change very much. These people who will only be comfortable when I dilute those associations with femme signifiers.
As if maybe, by simply being what I am—a girl-feeling brain in a boy-looking body and boy-looking clothes—I might burn down something very important to them. Something that makes their life more comfortable and easy.
I am fourteen years old.
When I help my dad build things, he calls me strong. I feel like I am winning something and losing something at the same time.
I am seventeen years old.
Girls start to think I am a cute boy. I start to think I am an ugly girl.
[…]
I am in college.
I learn that some people ask to be called by different pronouns. I see how this feels in my head. It doesn’t make much of a difference. I still want to sit in that chair and flip that switch. Pronouns are the least of my concerns.
I visit a women’s college. I am surrounded by new women and we feel instantly comfortable around each other. I attend a lecture. The speaker yells “who gets to be a woman?” and a crowd of cis women responds “anyone who wants to be!” The sentiment is nice, but I think about the years I spent staring out the window at the stars and I feel suddenly uncomfortable.
Later during this trip I am having a conversation with my new friends about femininity. They are articulate and intelligent women. I’m grateful to be around them. Until I am told by one of them, angrily, that I am not really allowed to talk about femininity because I am a straight cis boy. It is not my place and it is not my territory. I should shut up and listen. Are these my people?
I don’t correct her. I never correct anyone.
I am told there is something special — something ineffable — about Female Friendship. I am told that I could not understand or experience this. They said anyone is a woman who wants to be—is it true? What does this say about my friendships with girls?
I start to consider what I might be, if my girlness hasn’t counted simply because it wasn’t overtly confessed. I think about my boyness—about my childhood and adolescence—how my experiences with boys deviated from what I was taught to expect. I change my major and spend a year writing about non-gay-identifying male femininity from the Aesthetics of the late 1880’s to vaudeville radio stars. Eventually, as a love/hate letter to coming-of-age films of the 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s, I write my thesis on the friendship and sexuality of American males and its representation in television & film. One piece of feedback is “I am so sick of boys writing about boys.”
I think about being told I was not allowed to speak about femininity. I wonder what a person like me is allowed to speak about.
[…]
One of the students tells me that I can’t be objective about masculinity because I am a straight cis male, and that I should shut up and listen. Are these my people?
I don’t correct them. I never correct anyone.
It is interesting to see where people insist proximity to a subject makes one informed, and where they insist it makes them biased. It is interesting that they think it’s their call to make.
Because I have been reduced to my appearance — to the way I present for my own well-being — by cisfeminists so often that I feel a fucked up Stockholm syndrome attachment to being misgendered, and to this dual identity. My dysmorphia is as entwined in my identity as anything else. I have lived with it for decades as a girl pretending to be a boy. And the nearer I get to something I’ve wanted my whole life, the more it feels like playing into the aesthetic politics of a group of people who reject me because of the associations they have with my body—a body which I cannot, ultimately, change very much. These people who will only be comfortable when I dilute those associations with femme signifiers.
As if maybe, by simply being what I am—a girl-feeling brain in a boy-looking body and boy-looking clothes—I might burn down something very important to them. Something that makes their life more comfortable and easy.
(Which, it should be noted, is not without it costs, social and consequently financial as well.)
posted by Dysk at 2:27 AM on June 22, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 2:27 AM on June 22, 2023 [18 favorites]
Though on having read the whole article now, this sounds like so many similar narratives, where the narrator is surrounded by awful people telling them awful things, and it sounds like what they really need is a genuinely supportive and understanding social circle. It's like they take the reactions of the people around them to what they say as somehow facts about how people are, how people will react, rather than being able to write the person in question off as "ah, another idiot".
Like, it's treating a certain culture and a smallish group of people with an orthodoxy as representative of the world. I'm having a hard time explaining this. But it's like the bullshit words she hears enter her soul and sit, somehow, rather than being rejected.
posted by Dysk at 2:47 AM on June 22, 2023 [22 favorites]
Like, it's treating a certain culture and a smallish group of people with an orthodoxy as representative of the world. I'm having a hard time explaining this. But it's like the bullshit words she hears enter her soul and sit, somehow, rather than being rejected.
posted by Dysk at 2:47 AM on June 22, 2023 [22 favorites]
This is a double. I say this not to suggest it be deleted, but to caution people that we went down the road before with this essay and it was not pleasant. In particular, please, please, please do not think this is a "non-normative" trans experience or narrative. She describes an extremely normative experience, but from a perspective cis people do not hear often.
posted by hoyland at 3:55 AM on June 22, 2023 [44 favorites]
posted by hoyland at 3:55 AM on June 22, 2023 [44 favorites]
Katelyn Burns' response
posted by i used to be someone else at 5:24 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by i used to be someone else at 5:24 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
So, here I am at 41, having self-accepted as NB at 38 or 39. I self-accepted as trans at 40, and decided that HRT was the way to go. For all intents and purposes, this essay could well be me, except that the author is about 10 years younger than I am (estimating based on "now 26" written in 2016).
It strikes me as half-way between relatable and "doesn't pass the sniff test." I very nearly bounced off it solely for the use of "transwoman", which is used as an anti-trans dogwhistle, but decided to push through anyway.
All of the women in her life seem to be these misandrist, transphobic, flat stereotypes. The gender studies class is taught by a man-hating feminist, obviously. The female friends who she talks about femininity and trans issues with? They're immediately dismissive, instead of actually intrigued by a seeming man who actually cares about this in a way other men do not.
If it actually is real, then yeah, she's just happening to talk to a small sample of the very worst people. Online harassment? Yeah, that's rife. But people in real life aren't typically like this. Notably, no mention of explicitly queer spaces. No clubs, no community events, none of that.
It reads less like "the very real experience of a normative trans person" and much more as "the very real experience of a trans person who chose self-harm." I don't want to victim-blame, but the insistence on gaining the acceptance of these particular women rather than finding a more accepting community is maladaptive.
The more I think about it, the more likely it is it feels like it's real, but if anything, it's the disorganized, flailing thoughts of someone who never had a single person in their life to support them or help guide them. "Every time I try to leave this crab pot, I get pulled back down, so I'm not going to try to leave" is a rational response. But that doesn't mean that most social circles are crab pots and it doesn't mean it's impossible to leave them, if given genuine help.
posted by explosion at 5:34 AM on June 22, 2023 [19 favorites]
It strikes me as half-way between relatable and "doesn't pass the sniff test." I very nearly bounced off it solely for the use of "transwoman", which is used as an anti-trans dogwhistle, but decided to push through anyway.
All of the women in her life seem to be these misandrist, transphobic, flat stereotypes. The gender studies class is taught by a man-hating feminist, obviously. The female friends who she talks about femininity and trans issues with? They're immediately dismissive, instead of actually intrigued by a seeming man who actually cares about this in a way other men do not.
If it actually is real, then yeah, she's just happening to talk to a small sample of the very worst people. Online harassment? Yeah, that's rife. But people in real life aren't typically like this. Notably, no mention of explicitly queer spaces. No clubs, no community events, none of that.
It reads less like "the very real experience of a normative trans person" and much more as "the very real experience of a trans person who chose self-harm." I don't want to victim-blame, but the insistence on gaining the acceptance of these particular women rather than finding a more accepting community is maladaptive.
The more I think about it, the more likely it is it feels like it's real, but if anything, it's the disorganized, flailing thoughts of someone who never had a single person in their life to support them or help guide them. "Every time I try to leave this crab pot, I get pulled back down, so I'm not going to try to leave" is a rational response. But that doesn't mean that most social circles are crab pots and it doesn't mean it's impossible to leave them, if given genuine help.
posted by explosion at 5:34 AM on June 22, 2023 [19 favorites]
I have not read the article and I will not. The rebuttal article listed seems slightly harsh at times but I agree with it more than the snippets of the main post I read.
My transition was very much "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -Nin
I suspect that a lot of transgender people weigh that struggle, the very present and real risks of transitioning vs the mounting, inescapable pressures of the truth about who we are. Maybe the answer isn't to not transition, but to take up that lighter and gasoline she noticed but was told never to play with.... And burn down the fucked systems that prevents her from transitioning.
posted by Jacen at 5:42 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
My transition was very much "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -Nin
I suspect that a lot of transgender people weigh that struggle, the very present and real risks of transitioning vs the mounting, inescapable pressures of the truth about who we are. Maybe the answer isn't to not transition, but to take up that lighter and gasoline she noticed but was told never to play with.... And burn down the fucked systems that prevents her from transitioning.
posted by Jacen at 5:42 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
I had my first inklings of being trans when I was a teenager in the early 1980s, and my parents took me to a psychologist who put me through what would now be called "conversion therapy" to convince me it was wrong. I buried it so deeply that when I had any glimmers of it, at all, I would immediately slam it down and try to bolt the door tighter.
During the pandemic, unemployed, I finally couldn't hold it closed anymore. At the age of 51 I had to admit to myself I was trans. It took nearly a year to officially come out to anyone else, that being my wife.
I'm on HRT now, and putting together a wardrobe, and learning makeup. My wife gets frustrated, then remembers that no, I did not in fact grow up learning this stuff, and helps me. (Eyebrows are such a pain.) I shave daily. I'm watching insurance to see if they update what they do for gender transition.
I hear this person, and all I can think is "Oh, hon, those people broke you, and I hope someday you can be you."
posted by mephron at 5:43 AM on June 22, 2023 [20 favorites]
During the pandemic, unemployed, I finally couldn't hold it closed anymore. At the age of 51 I had to admit to myself I was trans. It took nearly a year to officially come out to anyone else, that being my wife.
I'm on HRT now, and putting together a wardrobe, and learning makeup. My wife gets frustrated, then remembers that no, I did not in fact grow up learning this stuff, and helps me. (Eyebrows are such a pain.) I shave daily. I'm watching insurance to see if they update what they do for gender transition.
I hear this person, and all I can think is "Oh, hon, those people broke you, and I hope someday you can be you."
posted by mephron at 5:43 AM on June 22, 2023 [20 favorites]
I think we have to honor that there are people who don’t feel like they owe the world their vulnerable parts. There’s no manual for being a human that says consequences be damned we have to express ourselves. Maybe at some point we feel that way, but maybe we don’t. I keep thinking about how Pride is very much cordoned off for people who are out. And thinking about how many people who present as allies are actually queer and trans, and that yeah it is often the hardline attitudes that make them sure they won’t be accepted. I have watched this play out in my life. Someone who could have written a lot of this essay but chose to change her pronouns. And when we talked about this essay said “yes, this is why I don’t interact with a lot of people.” It certainly matches up with my experiences, in ways that I have termed “being a bad trans.” And like I just see immediately someone saying that the word someone uses to describe themselves as a dogwhistle and know that the kind of trans I am would also be nitpicked to death.
There’s not one tidy narrative that ends in coming out.
posted by Bottlecap at 6:17 AM on June 22, 2023 [33 favorites]
There’s not one tidy narrative that ends in coming out.
posted by Bottlecap at 6:17 AM on June 22, 2023 [33 favorites]
Well that was painful to read. And familiar in some ways, all trans narratives are far from the same but they often rhyme, and I was in the closet for close to a decade before doing something about it.
The stuff at the end about the way people interact over gender is pretty true too. I have largely disconnected from talking about Gender on the Internet because it's so damn combative. Remember Isabel Fall's "I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter" and the immense amount of shit that got heaped on it by people who seemed to mostly stop reading at the title?
also geez this is from 2016. Hopefully Ms. Coates has figured out how to get past all of this stuff and be happy, whatever decision they made about gender, seven years is long enough for a lot of things to get changed.
posted by egypturnash at 6:32 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
The stuff at the end about the way people interact over gender is pretty true too. I have largely disconnected from talking about Gender on the Internet because it's so damn combative. Remember Isabel Fall's "I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter" and the immense amount of shit that got heaped on it by people who seemed to mostly stop reading at the title?
also geez this is from 2016. Hopefully Ms. Coates has figured out how to get past all of this stuff and be happy, whatever decision they made about gender, seven years is long enough for a lot of things to get changed.
posted by egypturnash at 6:32 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
It certainly matches up with my experiences, in ways that I have termed “being a bad trans.” And like I just see immediately someone saying that the word someone uses to describe themselves as a dogwhistle and know that the kind of trans I am would also be nitpicked to death.
Not every trans community is for every trans person. Maybe in some ideal world it could be, but not in this reality. The HBSers reject me and mine just as much as we reject the HBSers, for example. That there are grand communities where you feel unwelcome does not mean that there might not be one out there where you do.
posted by Dysk at 6:33 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not every trans community is for every trans person. Maybe in some ideal world it could be, but not in this reality. The HBSers reject me and mine just as much as we reject the HBSers, for example. That there are grand communities where you feel unwelcome does not mean that there might not be one out there where you do.
posted by Dysk at 6:33 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
I keep thinking about how Pride is very much cordoned off for people who are out.
But...it isn't. Get some friends, go to a Pride event. Or go alone. Why you go is your own business, no one asks why you're there or demands to see credentials. There's tons of people cheering and smiling, no one knows if you're queer or an ally. Wear a pin that one day, and then take it off and never wear it again. Or don't.
5 years ago? I was a "good ally". I had all the same doubts, about whether I was "queer enough." I had (and have) so many trans friends, and I was inspired by their journeys, but I thought I was just a relative rarity, a cis man who took the time to be introspective of gender. Am I actually queer? Am I actually trans?
But the key is, the gatekeeping came largely from within. My own worries, my own fears of being an imposter. Actually interacting with queer people has been the best thing. I'm now on a Discord server with a large number of trans folks, some with years (or even decades) of HRT and transition experience, some new to it, some still closeted or stealth, and some folks who are still unsure if they're trans. There's only support, literally no pressure. It's all, "do what feels right and safe, and let us know how we can support you."
There is no right way to be trans. I don't expect all trans people to be out in all aspects of their lives. They owe people nothing, including coming out, and definitely not transition. But Katelyn Burns is right: this isn't a "wrong narrative," this is a scary story disguised as a diary entry.
Honestly, apologies if I'm being over-vigilant, but I have the happy honor of being trans and Jewish, and so I've learned to pick up on dog-whistles quickly. If I happen to flag a few false-positives, my bad, but that's the nature of the Internet, with bad-faith actors abounding. I am not going to apologize for pointing this sort of stuff out when it's often the best way to identify shit manufactured by the likes of Matt Walsh.
posted by explosion at 6:37 AM on June 22, 2023 [15 favorites]
But...it isn't. Get some friends, go to a Pride event. Or go alone. Why you go is your own business, no one asks why you're there or demands to see credentials. There's tons of people cheering and smiling, no one knows if you're queer or an ally. Wear a pin that one day, and then take it off and never wear it again. Or don't.
5 years ago? I was a "good ally". I had all the same doubts, about whether I was "queer enough." I had (and have) so many trans friends, and I was inspired by their journeys, but I thought I was just a relative rarity, a cis man who took the time to be introspective of gender. Am I actually queer? Am I actually trans?
But the key is, the gatekeeping came largely from within. My own worries, my own fears of being an imposter. Actually interacting with queer people has been the best thing. I'm now on a Discord server with a large number of trans folks, some with years (or even decades) of HRT and transition experience, some new to it, some still closeted or stealth, and some folks who are still unsure if they're trans. There's only support, literally no pressure. It's all, "do what feels right and safe, and let us know how we can support you."
There is no right way to be trans. I don't expect all trans people to be out in all aspects of their lives. They owe people nothing, including coming out, and definitely not transition. But Katelyn Burns is right: this isn't a "wrong narrative," this is a scary story disguised as a diary entry.
Honestly, apologies if I'm being over-vigilant, but I have the happy honor of being trans and Jewish, and so I've learned to pick up on dog-whistles quickly. If I happen to flag a few false-positives, my bad, but that's the nature of the Internet, with bad-faith actors abounding. I am not going to apologize for pointing this sort of stuff out when it's often the best way to identify shit manufactured by the likes of Matt Walsh.
posted by explosion at 6:37 AM on June 22, 2023 [15 favorites]
I have a lot of thoughts about this and not much time.
My non-totally-trans-linked thought is that on the one hand it is the writer's responsibility to transition and deal with her feelings about boyhood, etc, but on the other, anti-oppression political analysis does not absolutely have to be based around repeated "this large category of people are all vile, useless and ugly". Sometimes that is blowing off steam, and that's fine, but it also really does develop into an in-group one-upping process that is, frankly, not so great.
A reason not to do this is not because some men are Not So Bad Actually or because some people you think are men may be trans women, but because constant use of "this large group of people are vile, useless and ugly" analysis can be extremely triggering for anxious or injured people. That's what I think happened to the writer, and it can happen to people regardless of their gender identity.
I want to stress that there is a big difference between hyperbole/blowing off steam/etc and the dynamic which can develop in specific social circles which can be very hostile and negative and police-y. Merely saying "men suck amirite" isn't what's at issue - specific social group dynamics which I think many people in young radical circles have witnessed are what's at issue.
The writer seems like someone who is extremely susceptible to the climate in groups, trying to suss out rules, etc. It seems this way to me because that's how I am too, and Useless Ugly analysis tends to mess me up - it creates a sense that if you're not careful, you too will make a mistake and be a useless ugly person; it creates a sense that if you don't fit in to the group 100% then you would be lumped in with the useless and ugly if the group only knew.
As you can imagine, most of the radical groups that really, really bond around this kind of analysis are full of people who are secretly scared of what the others would think if they knew.
It also makes things tough for people who are trying to figure out the group rules. Remember when the big category for radical online discussion was cultural appropriation? I am a rule-oriented person, so every time an artist, etc was designated an appropriator I crossed them off my list forever. So I was really, really confused when Lana del Rey became cool again - I thought we had all decided that she was culturally appropriative and bad forever, but in fact that was just some bullshit that people said online to pass the time. Most people didn't really think that she was Bad Forever. That was just me, because I was trying to figure out the rules for being a good person.
Anyway, my thought is that Coates seems like a person who really internalizes what other people say and do, probably for basically good reasons of safety and survival, and while she has some responsibility to make her own life, maybe queers and feminists and so on could consider whether our social circles are falling into mean patterns that make it tough for people.
posted by Frowner at 6:42 AM on June 22, 2023 [40 favorites]
My non-totally-trans-linked thought is that on the one hand it is the writer's responsibility to transition and deal with her feelings about boyhood, etc, but on the other, anti-oppression political analysis does not absolutely have to be based around repeated "this large category of people are all vile, useless and ugly". Sometimes that is blowing off steam, and that's fine, but it also really does develop into an in-group one-upping process that is, frankly, not so great.
A reason not to do this is not because some men are Not So Bad Actually or because some people you think are men may be trans women, but because constant use of "this large group of people are vile, useless and ugly" analysis can be extremely triggering for anxious or injured people. That's what I think happened to the writer, and it can happen to people regardless of their gender identity.
I want to stress that there is a big difference between hyperbole/blowing off steam/etc and the dynamic which can develop in specific social circles which can be very hostile and negative and police-y. Merely saying "men suck amirite" isn't what's at issue - specific social group dynamics which I think many people in young radical circles have witnessed are what's at issue.
The writer seems like someone who is extremely susceptible to the climate in groups, trying to suss out rules, etc. It seems this way to me because that's how I am too, and Useless Ugly analysis tends to mess me up - it creates a sense that if you're not careful, you too will make a mistake and be a useless ugly person; it creates a sense that if you don't fit in to the group 100% then you would be lumped in with the useless and ugly if the group only knew.
As you can imagine, most of the radical groups that really, really bond around this kind of analysis are full of people who are secretly scared of what the others would think if they knew.
It also makes things tough for people who are trying to figure out the group rules. Remember when the big category for radical online discussion was cultural appropriation? I am a rule-oriented person, so every time an artist, etc was designated an appropriator I crossed them off my list forever. So I was really, really confused when Lana del Rey became cool again - I thought we had all decided that she was culturally appropriative and bad forever, but in fact that was just some bullshit that people said online to pass the time. Most people didn't really think that she was Bad Forever. That was just me, because I was trying to figure out the rules for being a good person.
Anyway, my thought is that Coates seems like a person who really internalizes what other people say and do, probably for basically good reasons of safety and survival, and while she has some responsibility to make her own life, maybe queers and feminists and so on could consider whether our social circles are falling into mean patterns that make it tough for people.
posted by Frowner at 6:42 AM on June 22, 2023 [40 favorites]
I hope that this person is all the woman they want to be today--the struggles described seem very relatable for someone in a tough position.
(Also, if that was me, the Katelyn Burns essay would scare me off a cliff. Your feelings are wrong and dangerous, you're going to end up screaming insanely over your junk if you don't transition, everyone will reject you if you DO transition, your only possible community is, uh, me... Not great!)
posted by kingdead at 6:52 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
(Also, if that was me, the Katelyn Burns essay would scare me off a cliff. Your feelings are wrong and dangerous, you're going to end up screaming insanely over your junk if you don't transition, everyone will reject you if you DO transition, your only possible community is, uh, me... Not great!)
posted by kingdead at 6:52 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
Good morning, I should not have said anything about myself or my thoughts because the assumptions being made are wrong and it pains me not to correct them. So. I have a great community. I came out to my entire city by yelling about being a queer homeless youth. I marched in the pride parade at the front holding the banner. Me seeing where we aren’t making space doesn’t mean that my life needs to be psychologized.
posted by Bottlecap at 6:53 AM on June 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Bottlecap at 6:53 AM on June 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
Bottlecap, I'm genuinely confused now. Are you the author of the posted article? Who is "psychologizing" your life? I've spoken only with regard to the author of the original article, to my own experiences, or about the trans experience writ large, and to the best of my comprehension, that's true of other commenters here.
posted by explosion at 6:56 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by explosion at 6:56 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Both your comment and the one above it immediately following mine use “you” and appear as a direct response. If they’re not meant that way, I can accept that. But using “you” generally does mean someone is talking about/to, well, You.
posted by Bottlecap at 6:59 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Bottlecap at 6:59 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
really this article, and the "response" by what seems to be "the Trans Twitter Influencer who shared what was intended as a private vent post with a painfully large amount of people"*, make me want to say a lot of things, things about the experience of Being Trans, things about the stories we tell cis people about Being Trans in order to sell them on the whole concept being okay, and things about how much outrage-based social media has fucked up or brains and our interactions with each other, but I feel like saying them is going to lead me into lengthy conversations I just do. not. want. to. have.
I have typed things in response to this article, and its comments, and I have deleted them. I will just say that I am really fucking glad I am not on Twitter any more.
* or maybe not, her account's deleted now but when this was posted she only had slightly less than 1k followers according to the Wayback Machine?
posted by egypturnash at 7:09 AM on June 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
I have typed things in response to this article, and its comments, and I have deleted them. I will just say that I am really fucking glad I am not on Twitter any more.
* or maybe not, her account's deleted now but when this was posted she only had slightly less than 1k followers according to the Wayback Machine?
posted by egypturnash at 7:09 AM on June 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's the colloquial and proverbial you. Like how people say "you can't have your cake and eat it too" rather than the stuffy and formal "one can't..."
I say "no one knows if you're queer or an ally" in the same vein as "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
posted by explosion at 7:11 AM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
I say "no one knows if you're queer or an ally" in the same vein as "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
posted by explosion at 7:11 AM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
explosion, both you and Dysk straight-up quoted Bottlecap to start your comments.
posted by sagc at 7:12 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by sagc at 7:12 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
"You" doesn't always mean you
Bottlecap: "I keep thinking about how Pride is very much cordoned off for people who are out."
Explosion (Re-written, meaning the same): "But...it isn't. Get some friends, go to a Pride event. Or go alone. Why a person goes is their own business, no one asks why someone is there or demands to see credentials. There's tons of people cheering and smiling, no one knows if someone is queer or an ally. Wear a pin that one day, and then take it off and never wear it again. Or don't."
posted by gestalt saloon at 7:30 AM on June 22, 2023 [4 favorites]
Bottlecap: "I keep thinking about how Pride is very much cordoned off for people who are out."
Explosion (Re-written, meaning the same): "But...it isn't. Get some friends, go to a Pride event. Or go alone. Why a person goes is their own business, no one asks why someone is there or demands to see credentials. There's tons of people cheering and smiling, no one knows if someone is queer or an ally. Wear a pin that one day, and then take it off and never wear it again. Or don't."
posted by gestalt saloon at 7:30 AM on June 22, 2023 [4 favorites]
OK so fucking mentally amend my comment to say "no one knows who is queer or is an ally."
I do not need my fucking word choices nitpicked to death. It's fucking exhausting to be trans on the Internet in 2023.
Am I being hypervigilant? Maybe. Is the Internet chock-full of TERFs using scare-monger tactics? Yup. Are people saying that trans people are trying to silence people who use wrong-speak? Yup. Am I being accused of doing it right now? Yup.
But now we've got this "this is the post trans people don't want you to see" and it's exhausting, because it's framed in this plausible deniability of "this was a private diary post" except it was posted publicly from all I can tell, and then re-posted to Medium.
"Trans people want you to follow this one specific path" is a harmful narrative, and it's just straight-up not the truth. There may be some people who think this (fuck trans-medicalists, for example), we are not a monolith. The community at-large is welcoming, supportive, and non-judgmental.
The issue at hand is that the author of the entry, even if her lived experiences are genuine, is drawing a conclusion about the trans experience and what the trans community wants and expects of her, without actually engaging with the trans community!
We just do not need more hand-wringing narratives about how HARD it is to be trans, how REJECTED you'll be, how women will never see you as more than a man, etc. I'm not saying this is wrong, I'm just saying more posts about found family and community, and how to find that community are what we actually need. Framing trans existence in terms of misery and palliation of that misery has done nothing but give bigots and fascists ammunition to paint us as broken people.
I'm not saying "you can't post this to Metafilter", but if you're going to post a trans sob story as a single post without any counterbalancing stories of trans joy, it's reasonable to expect some push back.
posted by explosion at 7:31 AM on June 22, 2023 [20 favorites]
I do not need my fucking word choices nitpicked to death. It's fucking exhausting to be trans on the Internet in 2023.
Am I being hypervigilant? Maybe. Is the Internet chock-full of TERFs using scare-monger tactics? Yup. Are people saying that trans people are trying to silence people who use wrong-speak? Yup. Am I being accused of doing it right now? Yup.
But now we've got this "this is the post trans people don't want you to see" and it's exhausting, because it's framed in this plausible deniability of "this was a private diary post" except it was posted publicly from all I can tell, and then re-posted to Medium.
"Trans people want you to follow this one specific path" is a harmful narrative, and it's just straight-up not the truth. There may be some people who think this (fuck trans-medicalists, for example), we are not a monolith. The community at-large is welcoming, supportive, and non-judgmental.
The issue at hand is that the author of the entry, even if her lived experiences are genuine, is drawing a conclusion about the trans experience and what the trans community wants and expects of her, without actually engaging with the trans community!
We just do not need more hand-wringing narratives about how HARD it is to be trans, how REJECTED you'll be, how women will never see you as more than a man, etc. I'm not saying this is wrong, I'm just saying more posts about found family and community, and how to find that community are what we actually need. Framing trans existence in terms of misery and palliation of that misery has done nothing but give bigots and fascists ammunition to paint us as broken people.
I'm not saying "you can't post this to Metafilter", but if you're going to post a trans sob story as a single post without any counterbalancing stories of trans joy, it's reasonable to expect some push back.
posted by explosion at 7:31 AM on June 22, 2023 [20 favorites]
Maybe this article just isn’t for you? I’m not sure how it could be a story trans people don’t want you to hear when I - a trans person - posted it. Nor do I think it’s about how hard it is to be trans. I think it’s about how hard it is to be a *human* having a human experience. And I don’t read the root of that hardness being because of transness but about how walking into spaces can sometimes fuck us up. It’s ok that it didn’t speak to you, but I am also going to push back on the idea that people can’t have these conversations. Because I actually do think it’s important for people who aren’t trans to think about and confront the ways that the spaces they make can be hostile even when they’re thinking of themselves as progressive. If you want a post about trans joy, be the poster you want to see! I will be all over that.
posted by Bottlecap at 8:21 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Bottlecap at 8:21 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
Both your comment and the one above it immediately following mine use “you” and appear as a direct response. If they’re not meant that way, I can accept that. But using “you” generally does mean someone is talking about/to, well, You.
Yeah, that is my bad, and I apologise. I should have said "one" instead, for the avoidance of doubt. I was replying to your comment, but not intending to comment on your personal situation, and I did a terrible job of communicating that. Again, sorry.
posted by Dysk at 8:30 AM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
Yeah, that is my bad, and I apologise. I should have said "one" instead, for the avoidance of doubt. I was replying to your comment, but not intending to comment on your personal situation, and I did a terrible job of communicating that. Again, sorry.
posted by Dysk at 8:30 AM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
(And to be double-plus clear, I mentioned HBSers as an example of a diametrically opposed community to mine, and oh god it looks awful to choose that example when people are reading it like I was addressing your personally. I absolutely did not mean to suggest you are a HBSer or might find your home there.)
posted by Dysk at 8:39 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 8:39 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thank you for the apology and clarification! I appreciate it and it changes how I read it on re-read. Muddling through conversation together ☺️
posted by Bottlecap at 8:44 AM on June 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Bottlecap at 8:44 AM on June 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
really this article, and the "response" by what seems to be "the Trans Twitter Influencer who shared what was intended as a private vent post with a painfully large amount of people"*
the article actually got quite a bit of traction before trans journalist katelyn burns (now @transscribe on twitter) referenced it or even responded.
i posted that response to provide a counterpoint to the initial post, though at the time i didn't frame it much, given how the whole discussion kicked off seven years ago; there's a lot of space in between both ideas.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:21 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
the article actually got quite a bit of traction before trans journalist katelyn burns (now @transscribe on twitter) referenced it or even responded.
i posted that response to provide a counterpoint to the initial post, though at the time i didn't frame it much, given how the whole discussion kicked off seven years ago; there's a lot of space in between both ideas.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:21 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
lowercase throwdown in the comments section! two lowercase commenters enter!!! two lowercase commenters leave!!!1!
we’re not cage match psychopaths or highlanders or whatever, there can be more than one.
but anyway: toxic trans/queer/feminist environments exist and can really screw with people. particularly, anime pfp twitter must be avoided at all costs because (in the immortal words of food house) get your ass off twitter cause it gives you fucking mental illness.
the bit about the lana del ray cancellation is really insightful, i think. a lot of people (including the author of this piece also including me) actually thought that Internet cancellation business was a form of political activity, when really it’s just a type of extremely rough play, carried out without the consent of the person being played with. it’s no big deal exactly when the involuntary player is someone big enough to have pr people handling their social media presence for them, but is devastating when regulars get pushed into it.
that said, i found this piece a little bit of a disappointment for reasons outside of the author’s control: it was written in 2016, and so isn’t focused on how a lot of trans people these days are staying in the closet not because of the anime pfp abusers and their simulars but instead because fucking neonazis are taking over the fucking planet and have trans people at the top of their list of people to be exterminated.
it’s an artifact of a different and less awful time and it’s not clear what its value is at our current cursed historical juncture.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:51 AM on June 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
we’re not cage match psychopaths or highlanders or whatever, there can be more than one.
but anyway: toxic trans/queer/feminist environments exist and can really screw with people. particularly, anime pfp twitter must be avoided at all costs because (in the immortal words of food house) get your ass off twitter cause it gives you fucking mental illness.
the bit about the lana del ray cancellation is really insightful, i think. a lot of people (including the author of this piece also including me) actually thought that Internet cancellation business was a form of political activity, when really it’s just a type of extremely rough play, carried out without the consent of the person being played with. it’s no big deal exactly when the involuntary player is someone big enough to have pr people handling their social media presence for them, but is devastating when regulars get pushed into it.
that said, i found this piece a little bit of a disappointment for reasons outside of the author’s control: it was written in 2016, and so isn’t focused on how a lot of trans people these days are staying in the closet not because of the anime pfp abusers and their simulars but instead because fucking neonazis are taking over the fucking planet and have trans people at the top of their list of people to be exterminated.
it’s an artifact of a different and less awful time and it’s not clear what its value is at our current cursed historical juncture.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:51 AM on June 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
i do think the concept of transition is often seen as a boundary; as if it's an event horizon, and the moment one crosses the threshold there's absolutely no return, one IS irrevocably trans.
it's terrifying. i get the hesitation. and the environment that one is in affects how the process could end up; all the calculus of whether to make the jump, how to make it, when to make it is unresolvable because at its core it can essentially be a leap of faith.
this isn't to say that it often is revolutionary; for me and a lot of others it can lead to a profusion of joy and activity, an inflorescence where previously only a barren, fallow fields existed. it was a kind of singularity for me and whatever existed before the event horizon has shifted and changed and become recontextualized after my inflection point. i know that i can't go back: not only is the past a foreign county, but another universe.
but i don't think that's how it works for everyone. for some, it's an ergosphere that they dive into, instead of the event horizon. they don't cross any specific singularity because they don't need to; others embed themselves at the edge, one foot in both worlds.
i do agree that seven years ago when that was written the author might have found themselves in an unpleasant milieu, and found safety in a protective shell, a box. maybe they've found peace in the no-man's-land they've settled in. i just know that while i never got to the point described in katelyn burn's response about crying in a fetal position, it was only because towards the end i resembled the hollow men, the empty men, a headpiece filled with straw.
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:38 AM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
it's terrifying. i get the hesitation. and the environment that one is in affects how the process could end up; all the calculus of whether to make the jump, how to make it, when to make it is unresolvable because at its core it can essentially be a leap of faith.
this isn't to say that it often is revolutionary; for me and a lot of others it can lead to a profusion of joy and activity, an inflorescence where previously only a barren, fallow fields existed. it was a kind of singularity for me and whatever existed before the event horizon has shifted and changed and become recontextualized after my inflection point. i know that i can't go back: not only is the past a foreign county, but another universe.
but i don't think that's how it works for everyone. for some, it's an ergosphere that they dive into, instead of the event horizon. they don't cross any specific singularity because they don't need to; others embed themselves at the edge, one foot in both worlds.
i do agree that seven years ago when that was written the author might have found themselves in an unpleasant milieu, and found safety in a protective shell, a box. maybe they've found peace in the no-man's-land they've settled in. i just know that while i never got to the point described in katelyn burn's response about crying in a fetal position, it was only because towards the end i resembled the hollow men, the empty men, a headpiece filled with straw.
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:38 AM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
maybe queers and feminists and so on could consider whether our social circles are falling into mean patterns that make it tough for people
I feel like Katelyn Burns's "how dare you express your own experience as you understand it, it may discourage other trans people from transitioning" approach has got to make it tougher. There's a distinction between "hey, friend, your approach to life may be missing some things, you may be wrong about what some other people are thinking, your analysis of the power dynamics here may be lacking" and "how could you write down what you feel, hostile people might use it." That's a lot to put on one person's single essay into self-understanding.
It's been seven years; I hope the author is in a better, happier place now.
posted by praemunire at 12:22 PM on June 22, 2023 [10 favorites]
I feel like Katelyn Burns's "how dare you express your own experience as you understand it, it may discourage other trans people from transitioning" approach has got to make it tougher. There's a distinction between "hey, friend, your approach to life may be missing some things, you may be wrong about what some other people are thinking, your analysis of the power dynamics here may be lacking" and "how could you write down what you feel, hostile people might use it." That's a lot to put on one person's single essay into self-understanding.
It's been seven years; I hope the author is in a better, happier place now.
posted by praemunire at 12:22 PM on June 22, 2023 [10 favorites]
This feels like a time capsule; I'd like to think the discourse has expanded beyond simplistic "ironic" "misandry". Maybe it's a function of age. This was written when the author was 26. I'm around the same age as the author and I've found that as I've gotten older I've also gotten less rigid. Also, when you're younger, your sense of self is more fragile and it's harder to not internalize people being shitty to you and to walk away from situations that aren't serving you. I hope she's doing better these days.
posted by airmail at 12:36 PM on June 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by airmail at 12:36 PM on June 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's been seven years; I hope the author is in a better, happier place now.
All I can do is read
And how sooner or later the choice of whether to put it down and stand up or collapse utterly is going to be upon you.
I hope she chose to put it down already.
If not, I hope she chooses to put it down rather than to collapse.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:16 PM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
All I can do is read
The best I can do, for me, is divest—as best I can—my identity from my appearance and focus, mindfully, on other things. It’s not impossible!and think about how there's a time limit on how long you can actually do that, and about how pretending you're not carrying this particular burden doesn't actually make it lighter, and how your back will start to bend no matter how long you try to grit your teeth and pretend it doesn't bother you.
And how sooner or later the choice of whether to put it down and stand up or collapse utterly is going to be upon you.
I hope she chose to put it down already.
If not, I hope she chooses to put it down rather than to collapse.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:16 PM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
I found this interesting. Thank you for posting it.
I'm a little creeped out by a tendency in comments here to dismiss this essay as all false consciousness.
I mean, would I be glad to hear that the author has since found kinder peers with a more complex worldview? Yes! And is happier, maybe because she came out of the closet? Sure! If I were her friend, and she confided her thoughts to me, would I talk up the benefits of cognitive psychotherapy? Um yes, I would very much keep an eye out for any opportunity to do so without patronizing her.
But. The author is speaking her current truth, and has put a lot of effort into doing so. I consider that valuable.
I don’t want to be told I am “so pretty” when I hate my reflection. It doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel worse ....
Because for some transwomen, femininity can feel asymptotic — the closer you get, the more you feel you can never make it. I realize it’s not an inspirational message but it’s a hard truth: some people manage dysphoria better than others. When you fight it, it fights back. ...
The best I can do, for me, is divest—as best I can—my identity from my appearance and focus, mindfully, on other things.
This reminded me of a NYT interview that can be summed up by its headline: 'Samantha Irby Says it's OK to Hate Your Body.'. She talks about toxic positivity, and the burden it can impose on people who, like herself, are fat, or disabled, or have lived in superpoverty.
Some people have an attitude of acceptance about their bodies. Is that a way of thinking or being that’s accessible to you? For me, no. ... Maybe I was born too early to get on the “I don’t give a [expletive] if you see my legs” thing. I have never had that relationship with my body, and I think it’s compounded by the Crohn’s and the arthritis that has come because of the Crohn’s. I can’t even move around the way I want. My brain is good; she’s never let me down. The body has always let me down. It would feel dishonest for me to be like, “I love my body, and you better love it too, because I don’t.”
....
Krang— just a brain inside a monster, I would love that. Part of it is other people’s perception or rejection. It changes you! I got dumped by this dude who was like, “I don’t think you would ever be able to chase our children around the yard.” I was like, “Um, I’m not having children, but thank you for giving me a new thing to worry about!” But the cherry on top is that my body doesn’t work right. It’s hard to love it when it gives me so many issues. Also, can I just say, the tyranny around loving yourself is bonkers to me. You don’t have to! What is this thing where you have to be publicly celebrating your body? The people who do — great! I wish that I could — no, I don’t. I don’t think we all have to love our bodies. It flattens the experience of having one, because they don’t all work the same. Telling a disabled person, “Just love yourself” — it’s like: “What? The world is stacked against you. It’s not made for you. It’s OK if you want to hate your body.”
posted by feral_goldfish at 11:12 PM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
I'm a little creeped out by a tendency in comments here to dismiss this essay as all false consciousness.
I mean, would I be glad to hear that the author has since found kinder peers with a more complex worldview? Yes! And is happier, maybe because she came out of the closet? Sure! If I were her friend, and she confided her thoughts to me, would I talk up the benefits of cognitive psychotherapy? Um yes, I would very much keep an eye out for any opportunity to do so without patronizing her.
But. The author is speaking her current truth, and has put a lot of effort into doing so. I consider that valuable.
I don’t want to be told I am “so pretty” when I hate my reflection. It doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel worse ....
Because for some transwomen, femininity can feel asymptotic — the closer you get, the more you feel you can never make it. I realize it’s not an inspirational message but it’s a hard truth: some people manage dysphoria better than others. When you fight it, it fights back. ...
The best I can do, for me, is divest—as best I can—my identity from my appearance and focus, mindfully, on other things.
This reminded me of a NYT interview that can be summed up by its headline: 'Samantha Irby Says it's OK to Hate Your Body.'. She talks about toxic positivity, and the burden it can impose on people who, like herself, are fat, or disabled, or have lived in superpoverty.
Some people have an attitude of acceptance about their bodies. Is that a way of thinking or being that’s accessible to you? For me, no. ... Maybe I was born too early to get on the “I don’t give a [expletive] if you see my legs” thing. I have never had that relationship with my body, and I think it’s compounded by the Crohn’s and the arthritis that has come because of the Crohn’s. I can’t even move around the way I want. My brain is good; she’s never let me down. The body has always let me down. It would feel dishonest for me to be like, “I love my body, and you better love it too, because I don’t.”
....
Krang— just a brain inside a monster, I would love that. Part of it is other people’s perception or rejection. It changes you! I got dumped by this dude who was like, “I don’t think you would ever be able to chase our children around the yard.” I was like, “Um, I’m not having children, but thank you for giving me a new thing to worry about!” But the cherry on top is that my body doesn’t work right. It’s hard to love it when it gives me so many issues. Also, can I just say, the tyranny around loving yourself is bonkers to me. You don’t have to! What is this thing where you have to be publicly celebrating your body? The people who do — great! I wish that I could — no, I don’t. I don’t think we all have to love our bodies. It flattens the experience of having one, because they don’t all work the same. Telling a disabled person, “Just love yourself” — it’s like: “What? The world is stacked against you. It’s not made for you. It’s OK if you want to hate your body.”
posted by feral_goldfish at 11:12 PM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
I don’t want to be told I am “so pretty” when I hate my reflection. It doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel worse ....
Because for some transwomen, femininity can feel asymptotic — the closer you get, the more you feel you can never make it.
Yeah, I am fully on board with the first sentence. Anyone telling me I'm pretty is getting serious stink-eye, because a) they're an obvious fucking liar, and b) they clearly think being pretty is very important, or they wouldn't lie to me about it like that. I don't think being pretty matters. I'm not, and I don't care. I actually internalised all the stuff I was told as a child of the 80s/90s: what's on the outside doesn't matter, it's who you are inside that matters. Beauty is skin deep and shallow, irrelevant. Don't judge people by his they look. All of that genuinely good and positive messaging that got abandoned sometime around the turn of the millennium in favour of body positivity (which also has some positive aspects, but cedes way too much ground on the importance of appearance).
I will also never be particularly feminine. I feel more strongly about this one: femininity is not femaleness. They are orthogonal. I am very unfeminine, but I am no less a woman for it. Equating the two feels like toxic gender policing to me. (Of course that is not the same as wanting to be feminine. No issues with that. I happen not to, but I'm not going to pretend my preferences are somehow better).
So, in a sense I'm in exactly the same situation as the author here. It's just that I don't understand why it's supposed to be a problem, or a reason not to transition. My body can be an ugly, unfeminine lump that I don't love, and that's fine.
posted by Dysk at 11:32 PM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
Because for some transwomen, femininity can feel asymptotic — the closer you get, the more you feel you can never make it.
Yeah, I am fully on board with the first sentence. Anyone telling me I'm pretty is getting serious stink-eye, because a) they're an obvious fucking liar, and b) they clearly think being pretty is very important, or they wouldn't lie to me about it like that. I don't think being pretty matters. I'm not, and I don't care. I actually internalised all the stuff I was told as a child of the 80s/90s: what's on the outside doesn't matter, it's who you are inside that matters. Beauty is skin deep and shallow, irrelevant. Don't judge people by his they look. All of that genuinely good and positive messaging that got abandoned sometime around the turn of the millennium in favour of body positivity (which also has some positive aspects, but cedes way too much ground on the importance of appearance).
I will also never be particularly feminine. I feel more strongly about this one: femininity is not femaleness. They are orthogonal. I am very unfeminine, but I am no less a woman for it. Equating the two feels like toxic gender policing to me. (Of course that is not the same as wanting to be feminine. No issues with that. I happen not to, but I'm not going to pretend my preferences are somehow better).
So, in a sense I'm in exactly the same situation as the author here. It's just that I don't understand why it's supposed to be a problem, or a reason not to transition. My body can be an ugly, unfeminine lump that I don't love, and that's fine.
posted by Dysk at 11:32 PM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
Hi, I learned a lot from both pieces and the discussion here.. Thank you.
Surprise is a facet of my ignorance, and I'm most surprised that there's in-group vs out-group layering all the way down. If I'd thought about it, of course the hegemony is going to treat non-compliant or non-passing people badly and then in turn each layer act the same way to insiders and outsiders. If only there was love enough to accept the people who show up (while also judging people on the outcomes of their actions).
I hope also there's love enough that all the different people can find solidarity to throw out those who oppress, beginning a stronger bundle of people than the fascists. I hope we can live safe and peaceful lives.
posted by k3ninho at 1:36 AM on June 23, 2023
Surprise is a facet of my ignorance, and I'm most surprised that there's in-group vs out-group layering all the way down. If I'd thought about it, of course the hegemony is going to treat non-compliant or non-passing people badly and then in turn each layer act the same way to insiders and outsiders. If only there was love enough to accept the people who show up (while also judging people on the outcomes of their actions).
I hope also there's love enough that all the different people can find solidarity to throw out those who oppress, beginning a stronger bundle of people than the fascists. I hope we can live safe and peaceful lives.
posted by k3ninho at 1:36 AM on June 23, 2023
Thanks for this post and all the comments. Trans people seem to be targeted from all sides these days, and it's hard to be an ally when you basically don't understand what trans people are going through. When asked, I usually respond that one doesn't need to understand in order to respect and care. And also that no one would go through what it takes if it wasn't existential, but then I know (of) two people who do, essentially to mock transpeople and diversity politics.
It's not as bad as in the UK, but there are definitely people here trying to make political hay out of trans-rights. It doesn't seem to be gaining any traction, though.
It's strange, but I feel that as equal rights have been more widely accepted, race and gender have also become more politicized. Well, maybe it's not strange, since the conservatives who felt comfortable in their order before, now feel challenged. During the 60s and 70s, my male cousin and I, who spent a lot of our childhood together at our grandparents', very often wore identical overalls and pink t-shirts, and the same long braided hair. The only times there was a pressure to conform to gender was at big occasions like family weddings, and even then, I'm sure we could have opted out. Our parents grew up the same, I have a picture of me wearing some of their non-gendering clothes at my grandparents' golden anniversary. We were obviously aware that there were other norms at play in society, but we never felt bullied or threatened outside the farm (like at school, or at country fairs, though my cousin was always allowed to take the dog with him to bars when he was a teen). It was a sign of the times, but I also think our grandparents and parents and many of their friends were conscious about not gendering children too early, and society provided the means: there were non-gendered clothes and toys and sports.
Fast forward to when we became parents, and it wasn't as easy. My eldest is about the age of the author of the article in the post, and while I consciously attempted to carry on the values from my own upbringing, it was almost impossible. Several of my friends had gay parents or were themselves gay, and we struggled with this. Toys and clothes and even stuff like pencils and notebooks were extremely gendered, one couldn't chose gender-neutral items like what my cousin and I had. Perhaps my daughter didn't want a pink princess diary, but she didn't want a Batman one either.
Right now I am very hopeful, as I see the youngest generation revolting against all of this. But I also suspect I am living in a bubble now, just as I did as a child. The good thing is that there is that bubble, which was really hard to find during the 90s through the 10s. I mentioned as response to an ask that my neighborhood seems to be an LGBT+ hub in this city, which probably means I have a distorted view of how tolerant and joyous life can be for young people today. But hey, just come here and be here. Dance in the streets.
posted by mumimor at 4:38 AM on June 23, 2023
It's not as bad as in the UK, but there are definitely people here trying to make political hay out of trans-rights. It doesn't seem to be gaining any traction, though.
It's strange, but I feel that as equal rights have been more widely accepted, race and gender have also become more politicized. Well, maybe it's not strange, since the conservatives who felt comfortable in their order before, now feel challenged. During the 60s and 70s, my male cousin and I, who spent a lot of our childhood together at our grandparents', very often wore identical overalls and pink t-shirts, and the same long braided hair. The only times there was a pressure to conform to gender was at big occasions like family weddings, and even then, I'm sure we could have opted out. Our parents grew up the same, I have a picture of me wearing some of their non-gendering clothes at my grandparents' golden anniversary. We were obviously aware that there were other norms at play in society, but we never felt bullied or threatened outside the farm (like at school, or at country fairs, though my cousin was always allowed to take the dog with him to bars when he was a teen). It was a sign of the times, but I also think our grandparents and parents and many of their friends were conscious about not gendering children too early, and society provided the means: there were non-gendered clothes and toys and sports.
Fast forward to when we became parents, and it wasn't as easy. My eldest is about the age of the author of the article in the post, and while I consciously attempted to carry on the values from my own upbringing, it was almost impossible. Several of my friends had gay parents or were themselves gay, and we struggled with this. Toys and clothes and even stuff like pencils and notebooks were extremely gendered, one couldn't chose gender-neutral items like what my cousin and I had. Perhaps my daughter didn't want a pink princess diary, but she didn't want a Batman one either.
Right now I am very hopeful, as I see the youngest generation revolting against all of this. But I also suspect I am living in a bubble now, just as I did as a child. The good thing is that there is that bubble, which was really hard to find during the 90s through the 10s. I mentioned as response to an ask that my neighborhood seems to be an LGBT+ hub in this city, which probably means I have a distorted view of how tolerant and joyous life can be for young people today. But hey, just come here and be here. Dance in the streets.
posted by mumimor at 4:38 AM on June 23, 2023
That line 'I don't argue, I never argue' was struck me. Like the author, I have generally just let people see what they want. I think that's an okay thing to do, if you are actually at peace with people thinking whatever they want? But the author does not seem to be, and hopefully she's found something that works better for her since this article.
(I can't tell whether the author tried to come out in college-feminist spaces and got treated terribly, or whether she expected the college feminists to intuit her inner self and it didn't work?)
The economic advantage of being perceived as cisgender was certainly one of my considerations. I was a decade older and well into a stable career before I started prioritizing my own comfort over hireability.
posted by mersen at 5:34 AM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
(I can't tell whether the author tried to come out in college-feminist spaces and got treated terribly, or whether she expected the college feminists to intuit her inner self and it didn't work?)
The economic advantage of being perceived as cisgender was certainly one of my considerations. I was a decade older and well into a stable career before I started prioritizing my own comfort over hireability.
posted by mersen at 5:34 AM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's not as bad as in the UK, but there are definitely people here trying to make political hay out of trans-rights. It doesn't seem to be gaining any traction, though.
I'm not sure where "here" is for you, but in the US, no, the right-wing nut jobs are making a lot of trouble for trans people. Florida is Trans Hell, with people trying to flee (along with immigrants). Some of these are looking to go to the Supreme Court, where the question of when the Wholly Owned, the Handmaiden, the Silent Nutjob and the Fisherman(1) get the other two to help them outlaw HRT in the United States. You can read about how it's going at Erin Reed's Substack.
(1) Kavanaugh, Barrett, Thomas and Alito, respectively. Yes, this is disrespecful and rude and I have no apologies.
posted by mephron at 5:51 AM on June 23, 2023
I'm not sure where "here" is for you, but in the US, no, the right-wing nut jobs are making a lot of trouble for trans people. Florida is Trans Hell, with people trying to flee (along with immigrants). Some of these are looking to go to the Supreme Court, where the question of when the Wholly Owned, the Handmaiden, the Silent Nutjob and the Fisherman(1) get the other two to help them outlaw HRT in the United States. You can read about how it's going at Erin Reed's Substack.
(1) Kavanaugh, Barrett, Thomas and Alito, respectively. Yes, this is disrespecful and rude and I have no apologies.
posted by mephron at 5:51 AM on June 23, 2023
I'm not sure where "here" is for you, but in the US, no, the right-wing nut jobs are making a lot of trouble for trans people.
It's not the US.
posted by Dysk at 6:48 AM on June 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's not the US.
posted by Dysk at 6:48 AM on June 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
I was reading trans twitter back when the piece came out. I don't remember it but then I don't remember a lot of things from then. I read what Katelyn Burns wrote at the time, and I've nothing personally against her, but I always struggle with any framing of another person's existence as truly knowable. And therefore I have trouble with saying what is good, or reasonable or best, what is guaranteed to happen, what it means, how it will play out for any other person.
Yes, most other trans people I know expressed experiences of increasing misery alleviated by transition. Some didn't make it. Some killed themselves along the way. Being closeted and pretransiton has been horrible for my own mental health but that's my own experience, and while I might worry at what it would cost another to live this way, I truly cannot know what they would feel.
But what I do know is that trans communities can be good, welcoming, supportive. They can also be toxic and awful. Sometimes both are true, but for different people. This is the same as any sort of social group. Groups defined by shared marginalization may have stronger inclinations towards mutual support, but oppression is not a guarantee of angelic transformation.
Individuals also vary widely in how easy they find establishing connections to new social groups. It's hard for me. I'm neurodivergent as well as transgender and come from an unusual cultural background. Building a group of friends who can be supportive when I need someone outside of unsupported family is hard. It's harder yet due to a lifetime of experiences that make trust very hard.
"Go out and find your queer clan" sounds great but it's not always easy, and I do try. And many who I know struggle have tried.
All I can suggest is empathy.
posted by allium cepa at 7:33 AM on June 23, 2023 [13 favorites]
Yes, most other trans people I know expressed experiences of increasing misery alleviated by transition. Some didn't make it. Some killed themselves along the way. Being closeted and pretransiton has been horrible for my own mental health but that's my own experience, and while I might worry at what it would cost another to live this way, I truly cannot know what they would feel.
But what I do know is that trans communities can be good, welcoming, supportive. They can also be toxic and awful. Sometimes both are true, but for different people. This is the same as any sort of social group. Groups defined by shared marginalization may have stronger inclinations towards mutual support, but oppression is not a guarantee of angelic transformation.
Individuals also vary widely in how easy they find establishing connections to new social groups. It's hard for me. I'm neurodivergent as well as transgender and come from an unusual cultural background. Building a group of friends who can be supportive when I need someone outside of unsupported family is hard. It's harder yet due to a lifetime of experiences that make trust very hard.
"Go out and find your queer clan" sounds great but it's not always easy, and I do try. And many who I know struggle have tried.
All I can suggest is empathy.
posted by allium cepa at 7:33 AM on June 23, 2023 [13 favorites]
And really, any message that boils down to "you're making it hard for the rest of us by struggling in public" can fuck right off.
posted by allium cepa at 7:35 AM on June 23, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by allium cepa at 7:35 AM on June 23, 2023 [13 favorites]
This was lovely and riveting.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:07 PM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:07 PM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
I guess that comment makes me seem like a tourist so I wish I could flesh it out but everything I want to say seem so much like it was generated in the Big Book of Platitudes - that it is heartbreaking how much the human condition is about struggling to be okay with being oneself on one hand, and struggling with other people's not permitting that on the other.
I don't feel articulate enough right now to do a good job with this. I can only say that if you feel like a woman on the inside, you are a woman, to me, and I don't care if you walk around with a full beard in the women's locker room with me, sister. *
Sorry for all the ways I probably fucked that comment up, I just wanted to say something because, God, that post is an emotional ride.
*not that anyone needs anyone else to validate or offer permission for the sexual identity of another person, but when people say (my nearly eighty year old mother, for example) 'well, who cares/what difference does it make' I think it makes a big fucking difference if you're fourteen in Texas or Florida. (Irish-Catholic Republican working class Mom's reaction to Caitlyn Jenner's transition years ago was, Well good for her and boy was that a surprise take.)
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:26 PM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
I don't feel articulate enough right now to do a good job with this. I can only say that if you feel like a woman on the inside, you are a woman, to me, and I don't care if you walk around with a full beard in the women's locker room with me, sister. *
Sorry for all the ways I probably fucked that comment up, I just wanted to say something because, God, that post is an emotional ride.
*not that anyone needs anyone else to validate or offer permission for the sexual identity of another person, but when people say (my nearly eighty year old mother, for example) 'well, who cares/what difference does it make' I think it makes a big fucking difference if you're fourteen in Texas or Florida. (Irish-Catholic Republican working class Mom's reaction to Caitlyn Jenner's transition years ago was, Well good for her and boy was that a surprise take.)
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:26 PM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’m sure I read this essay years ago, as parts of it have been echoing in my mind since. It was only on re-reading it now that I remembered whence the echoes originated.
It was very much worth a second read.
In my experience, I can get so tied up and tangled in trying to give each side of a complex situation its due, so that I squelch the vigor and raw truth of my experience before it has had the chance to emerge and take form. Or else I will be held back by a fear to express the sorrow I meet in life using unminced words, without softening or diminishing, without stopping until I have said the whole truth, because the response I receive to expressions of existential pain has ever been a withdrawing “chin up” or a condescending pat on the head, and not the sort of level regard and plain empathy that I had hoped for.
So I admire what the writer has done here. I read it as as an exercise in allowing the full value of lived experience to be regarded for what it is, or anyway, that sphere of experience that has constellated around the peculiar ache of being trans and being misread and feeling for all the world trapped in it. There is a through-line of pain which she brings out by her craft—and while it could be that this is not the only story line to weave through the totality of her biography, and we wouldn’t know it by reading this essay alone, it is the story being told here, and she tells it with integrity.
My own trans story has not a few joy-filled moments, and I wish the same for the author of this piece. But I am grateful to her for voicing things that I hadn't realized could be voiced with so much force and sensitivity. Some of these are things I have known too.
posted by Ana Kolou, Squirrel at 10:45 PM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
It was very much worth a second read.
In my experience, I can get so tied up and tangled in trying to give each side of a complex situation its due, so that I squelch the vigor and raw truth of my experience before it has had the chance to emerge and take form. Or else I will be held back by a fear to express the sorrow I meet in life using unminced words, without softening or diminishing, without stopping until I have said the whole truth, because the response I receive to expressions of existential pain has ever been a withdrawing “chin up” or a condescending pat on the head, and not the sort of level regard and plain empathy that I had hoped for.
So I admire what the writer has done here. I read it as as an exercise in allowing the full value of lived experience to be regarded for what it is, or anyway, that sphere of experience that has constellated around the peculiar ache of being trans and being misread and feeling for all the world trapped in it. There is a through-line of pain which she brings out by her craft—and while it could be that this is not the only story line to weave through the totality of her biography, and we wouldn’t know it by reading this essay alone, it is the story being told here, and she tells it with integrity.
My own trans story has not a few joy-filled moments, and I wish the same for the author of this piece. But I am grateful to her for voicing things that I hadn't realized could be voiced with so much force and sensitivity. Some of these are things I have known too.
posted by Ana Kolou, Squirrel at 10:45 PM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
I just saw this video from Lily Alexandre, Why are people trans?, and I thought it would fit well in this conversation because if how she discusses the many different experiences that are grouped under the concept of "trans".
posted by eruonna at 11:36 AM on June 24, 2023
posted by eruonna at 11:36 AM on June 24, 2023
This was something I was linked to on Mastodon. I still have the tab open because I wanted to read it a few more times. It's very relatable to me. I was assigned male at birth, but never fit popular notions of manliness, hated most male-coded activities and to this day I still would rather hang out with women than men. There's more evidence that my gender didn't quite match my body but I'm not writing my own essay here so I'll leave it out. What it boils down to is, when I learned about how gender identity works I said to myself "shit, am I trans?" but ultimately with much reflection I decided no, more nonbinary/bigender. Like, I don't feel uncomfortable being called a dude or being seen as one, but if people did see me as a woman I wouldn't mind that either. I probably do lean a little more fem than masc, but it wasn't enough for me to go through the massive social/physical upheaval of transition. Most of my friends and coworkers don't see the entire me - but that's fine. I know who I am, and so does my spouse, and that's enough for me. I realize what I'm writing about here isn't exactly the same as what the author of the blog post wrote, but it felt like there was a lot of overlap so I thought I'd say something.
posted by signsofrain at 6:53 PM on June 24, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by signsofrain at 6:53 PM on June 24, 2023 [4 favorites]
The responses to this (not specifically here, so much as from all over) are disturbingly heavy on the dysphoria-as-necessity bullshit, which is absurdly damaging.
Whether or not the original writer is encountering and addressing any dysphoria “properly” isn’t for anyone but them to judge. We have to accept their statement that the article was intended as essentially a diary entry; this was an expression of how they felt at the time, not a nuanced and considered reflection of the trans community at large.
I’m nonbinary. My partner is a trans man. I’m not at all uncomfortable being seen as a cis man, they’re not at all uncomfortable (from the extensive conversations we’ve had - we’re both aware that this may change for one or both of us in the future) being seen as a cis woman. As a result, neither of us is “out” to a group beyond our friends and a portion of the local community.
A pertinent fact:
Making gender dysphoria inherent to trans identity, experience, and indeed definitive to it, leads to a series of clearly untrue and indeed perverse conclusions.
It makes suffering intrinsic to trans identity and experience, something that is not only demonstrably untrue, but upon even a moment’s reflection, cruel as a framework. A person’s gender identity is not emergent from or dependent on trauma, and they don’t need to be subject to discomfort and suffering to ‘qualify’ as who they are.
posted by Molten Berle at 7:49 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Whether or not the original writer is encountering and addressing any dysphoria “properly” isn’t for anyone but them to judge. We have to accept their statement that the article was intended as essentially a diary entry; this was an expression of how they felt at the time, not a nuanced and considered reflection of the trans community at large.
I’m nonbinary. My partner is a trans man. I’m not at all uncomfortable being seen as a cis man, they’re not at all uncomfortable (from the extensive conversations we’ve had - we’re both aware that this may change for one or both of us in the future) being seen as a cis woman. As a result, neither of us is “out” to a group beyond our friends and a portion of the local community.
A pertinent fact:
Making gender dysphoria inherent to trans identity, experience, and indeed definitive to it, leads to a series of clearly untrue and indeed perverse conclusions.
It makes suffering intrinsic to trans identity and experience, something that is not only demonstrably untrue, but upon even a moment’s reflection, cruel as a framework. A person’s gender identity is not emergent from or dependent on trauma, and they don’t need to be subject to discomfort and suffering to ‘qualify’ as who they are.
posted by Molten Berle at 7:49 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
I read this at 22 when it was published. At the time I was out as nonbinary but not transitioning. I do think that this article was one voice among many that encouraged me not to transition and I regret the effect that I let these have on me. I don't put that burden on this particular author who is trying to articulate their particular lived, and painful, experience, but I do blame the aura that sprung up around this article as if it was a novel perspective on being trans, and the people (trans and cis) in my life who directly encouraged me not to pursue a more profound nonbinary biomedical and social transition. Ultimately that decision is on me though, as is the responsibility for my own emotions and I can't complain too much because I have self-actualized re gender and my life on that front is as good as I can make it.
I don't think it's an ethical failing, but what I don't like about this article is frankly that the author refuses to take any emotional responsibility for the decision not to transition. It's all poetic acceptance of misery and how other women have put her in this position. I've had friends with similar relationships to transition in the past and all of those relationships have spluttered because I didn't want to have my core relationships be with people who were so committed to staying in circumstances they had identified as bad for them.
I think most cis people reading this personal essay are like people who've never studied regular Torah going straight into kabbalistic writing. It's outside their reading and critical thought level and I don't really care to hear their opinions about it. Trans people, I'm always willing even if the conclusion is that we have very different emotional truths.
posted by Summers at 9:26 AM on June 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
I don't think it's an ethical failing, but what I don't like about this article is frankly that the author refuses to take any emotional responsibility for the decision not to transition. It's all poetic acceptance of misery and how other women have put her in this position. I've had friends with similar relationships to transition in the past and all of those relationships have spluttered because I didn't want to have my core relationships be with people who were so committed to staying in circumstances they had identified as bad for them.
I think most cis people reading this personal essay are like people who've never studied regular Torah going straight into kabbalistic writing. It's outside their reading and critical thought level and I don't really care to hear their opinions about it. Trans people, I'm always willing even if the conclusion is that we have very different emotional truths.
posted by Summers at 9:26 AM on June 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
I do blame the aura that sprung up around this article as if it was a novel perspective on being trans,...
I think most cis people reading this personal essay are like people who've never studied regular Torah going straight into kabbalistic writing.
I remember this essay making the rounds of social media at the time and there were so many (cis) people finding it "deep" and "novel" and whatever else, and it just isn't. It's searing and, I think, relatable for many trans people--we've been or know people who've been in similar places--I certainly have a good memory of it seven years later, but it's the pain that's memorable, both the author's pain and my own pain at wanting to be able to tell them that they're not doomed, that there's a way out. (I don't even necessarily mean transitioning, though that very much seems like where she's headed.)
posted by hoyland at 4:29 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think most cis people reading this personal essay are like people who've never studied regular Torah going straight into kabbalistic writing.
I remember this essay making the rounds of social media at the time and there were so many (cis) people finding it "deep" and "novel" and whatever else, and it just isn't. It's searing and, I think, relatable for many trans people--we've been or know people who've been in similar places--I certainly have a good memory of it seven years later, but it's the pain that's memorable, both the author's pain and my own pain at wanting to be able to tell them that they're not doomed, that there's a way out. (I don't even necessarily mean transitioning, though that very much seems like where she's headed.)
posted by hoyland at 4:29 AM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
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posted by Dysk at 2:25 AM on June 22, 2023 [56 favorites]